Elizabeth felt sick at the fact that her mind was insistently arguing that shecouldask Papa for money now. It made her miserable. She would not let this temptation to ask something win.
Papa had told her: “When you realize that you have made a mistake, I promise that I will help you.”
If he’d told her that he despised her and he would never do anything for her, she wouldn’t have sick guilt gnawing at her guts. If he had told herthat, she might have even been able to say that she had made a mistake and beg for forgiveness now.
She could think of no good solution.
When the time for bed came, Colonel Fitzwilliam looked askance at Elizabeth’s plan to remain in the drawing room with Mr. Darcy for the whole night.
“No, no. That is more than half the distance to a scheme,” he said.
“Do not be ridiculous. No one could imagine anything salacious,” Elizabeth said. “He is recovering from gunshot, and I am a recently widowed woman. A respectable creature.”
Mr. Darcy offered, “I truly think, Mrs. Wickham, that you would be more comfortable upstairs, and now that we have so many servants, one of the manservants can sleep on a cot in here.”
“A man whom none of us know?” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “No.I’llsleep with you. I can care for any wounded man. It will not be the first time.”
“If that is your preference,” Elizabeth said. “Then have me woken to change the bandage.”
“It ismypreference,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied.
Mr. Darcy’s expression suggested to Elizabeth that he would have preferred for her to remain, and that his suggestion that she sleep in her own room had been made from duty, rather than preference. Elizabeth did not know if she should trust Colonel Fitzwilliam to wake up if the patient needed anything—or Mr. Darcy to clearly ask his cousin for help if it was necessary.
What was odd to Elizabeth was her own decided reluctance to abandon the post of nurse.
She had a vague feeling around the role, one that she suspected was romantic, girlish, and that should be completely despised.
Elizabeth went upstairs and soon both George and Emily climbed into the bed with her, and they all fell asleep in a big heap.
Some hours later Elizabeth started awake.
It was time to change Mr. Darcy’s bandage again. During the times that she had worked as a nurse, she had developed a sense of when the clock would tell her that it was time to awake.
Less than half a minute after she had started awake, as Elizabeth was mentally readying herself to groan to her feet (carefully so as to not wake either of the children), there was a soft knock on the door, and then it was slowly opened.
Elizabeth stood and went to the door.
Sally’s voice said out of the dark, “Ma’am, it’s time to change the bandage. I’ve heated the milk to the proper temperature.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. Shewaspleased by the servant’s initiative, though she worried that the milk would be far too hot and scalded by the time that she got to the kitchen.
In fact, the milk was fine, only a little too hot, and quickly Elizabeth prepared another poultice.
As she waited for it cool to the point it would not harm the skin, Sally chattered about the things that she had been made to do, but also how much cleaner and better run the place was now that there were other servants.
“Are you to go to bed now that you’ve woken me?”
“Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Brown wants me to wake Sarah next, to be the one to wake everyone in the morning, and to be available if Mr. Darcy should need anything, him being an invalid—I volunteered to stay up. Mrs. Brown worried that I might fall asleep, but I assured her I never would do no such thing, and I haven’t.”
“No, and you were quite punctual.”
Elizabeth went to the drawing room. Colonel Fitzwilliam neatly slept on the sofa in his shirtsleeves and breeches, rather than a night shirt. Elizabeth wondered if the gentleman could possibly be comfortable. But he was a veteran campaigner, and she had heard enough from such men to never doubt their capacities in the matter of sleeping in uncomfortable situations.
She softly touched Mr. Darcy on his shoulder.
He startled awake with a half shriek, and he looked at her in the low candlelight with wide eyes.
They stared at each other for almost too long. Something about his face made Elizabeth’s heart beat harder. One of the men whom Colonel Fitzwilliam had hired had shaved Mr. Darcy, and the clean face made him look the haughty gentleman.
